Posts Tagged ‘hop growing’

Plenty of East Anglian sunshine with the occasional traditional deluge of rain is literally suiting our hops down to the ground!

Apart from some help from the hose during drier spells, plus a bit of evening bine twiddling, they’ve pretty much been left to themselves this year, and we’re really pleased with progress, especially for the little Bramling, which was a late starter.

An update on the progress of our three hop plants. Despite me clumsily butchering the roots of the WGV and Fuggles in order to take some quite simple plantable samples for my dear old bruv, all is going very well indeed. The WGV and Fuggles will be used in as many batches of Dark Garden as I can muster in the Autumn. The Bramling Cross is a rather more reserved old stick, and if we get any cones at all for use in aroma additions I’ll be very happy.

Here are some photos from lunchtime today:

The Bramling Cross seems to be a later hop than most. It isn’t in the best spot in the garden and seems to flourish rather late in the season

The Fuggles are already as high as the fence, and would be thicker if I hadn’t cut a main bine and part of the root out

The Goldings have already gone crazy. I should probably cut out a few bines but they seem to be enjoying themselves, so I’m just going to let them run this year

Well, Spring has definitely sprung and the purple budded hop bines in the Boxshed garden have braved the morning frosts, pushed themselves through the ground and started their mad journey towards the end of the fence.

We only grow three varieties of hops ourselves right now, and didn’t get around to planting any more rhyzomes this year. But we did harvest a pretty decent yield from our first year and we’re hoping for even better results from these second year bines. They’re not doted on in any special way, really. They get plenty of water everyday once they start growing, and are fed with any tomato or veggie food that happens to be around as the summer progresses. We then pick ’em, dry ’em and store ’em around September time.

The three varieties are WGV Goldings, Fuggles and Bramling Cross. The first two contributed to several Autumn and Winter brews, while the Bramling looked pretty enough but didn’t provide sufficient cones to bother processing this year. We’re also lucky enough to have plenty of hedgrow hops in the local area – including Boadicea and Sarah, probably – which I’ve also noticed surfacing recently.

Anyway, plenty more on hop growth as things progress, but for now, here are photos of the three plants’ first sighting above ground!

The WGV plant was the most succesful last year and is off to a flyer once again. Look at all those buds!

Fuggles are really useful hops and luckily there seem to be plenty of good buds already

The Bramling Cross struggled last year and are already behind the others. More TLC needed I think.